There's a Fedora remix available, but no Raspberry Pi to run it on.

The Raspberry Pi foundation has suffered a production setback that could delay delivery of the organization's $35 Linux computer. The manufacturer accidentally used ethernet jacks without integrated magnetics, built-in transformers that provide DC-isolation and help filter noise.

The wrong jacks have been soldered to the Raspberry Pi boards and will have to be removed and replaced before the product can ship to end users. According to the foundation, the ethernet jacks are relatively easy to replace. The problem is that sourcing a sufficient quantity of the right ethernet jacks might take some time. This will be the second time that the Raspberry Pi project has suffered a minor delay due to component sourcing difficulties.

"All the stock of jacks we believed we had in place and ready to turn into the ethernet ports on your Raspberry Pis turn out not to be the correct part, so we’re having to start again and move through the negotiating/ordering/delivery cycle as fast as we can," a representative of the foundation said in a statement on the organization's blog.

The foundation says that it discovered the problem with the ethernet jacks several days ago, but waited until now to disclose it because they wanted to be sure that there were no other issues. The organization apologized for the delay and asked its eager customers to remain patient while the matter is resolved.

The Raspberry Pi foundation was originally formed with the aim of building an inexpensive computing system for young students to use to learn computer programming. As the project matured, it exploded in popularity and attracted the interest of many Linux enthusiasts and embedded systems hobbyists. The first model, which sells for $35, entered the manufacturing stage last month. The foundation's retail partners were flooded with demand when the product became available for purchase last week.

The Raspberry Pi computer is a bare ARM board that is roughly the size of a deck of playing cards. It has a 700MHz ARM11 CPU and 256MB of RAM. It will boot from an SD card and has a GPU that is reportedly competitive with that of modern smartphones. The first manufacturing run consists of 10,000 units, which fans are eager to use for projects ranging from wearable computing experiments to building tiny multimedia set-top boxes.

Alongside the official retail launch, the Raspberry Pi foundation announced that it has partnered with UK component makers Premier Farnell and RS Components. These companies are handling sales fulfillment for the first batch, but will handle production themselves after the first 10,000 units sell out. The foundation opted to transition to a licensed manufacturer model in order to ensure that there will eventually be enough units to meet demand.

In addition to disclosing the delay, the Raspberry Pi foundation also announced the availability of a special Fedora build that is tailored to run on the Raspberry Pi computer. The distribution, which is called the Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix, will provide a relatively complete computing environment for the low-cost ARM board. It is the Linux distribution that the foundation recommends for use on the Raspberry Pi hardware.

The software platform, which is based on the open source Fedora Linux distribution, was developed by a team at Seneca College's Center for the Development of Open Technology. The school, which is located in Toronto, is well known in the open source software community for its involvement with various projects, particularly its engagement with Mozilla on Web-related research.

As Raspberry Pi foundation director Eben Upton explained in a recent interview with Linux User and Developer Magazine, the latest version of the popular Ubuntu distribution will not run on the device because Ubuntu doesn't support the ARMv6 architecture, which is used by the Raspberry Pi board's ARM11 CPUs. Ubuntu's ARM port is focused on the ARMv7 architecture, which is used by Cortex-class ARM processors.

The Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix will give users the option of using the LXDE or XFCE desktop environments. It also comes with the Firefox Web browser, the GIMP image editing tool, the GNOME office suite, and a number of software components to enable development on the device, including runtimes for Python, Perl, and Ruby.

In addition to this fairly rich stack, users will also have access to additional ARM-compatible packages from the Fedora repositories. The distro also bundles several proprietary components that are needed to enable all of the board's capabilities, such as hardware-accelerated video processing.

More details about how to download and install the Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix can be found at the foundation's blog.

47 Reader Comments

Hope they can come out with a raspberry pi using the Allwinner A10 cpu which is a cortex a8 (armv7) single core at 1ghz using a mali 400 gpu. The mass volume price is 7 USD for an order of 5,000 cpus.I think this will be a great replacement for the arm v6 they are using now.

Hope they can come out with a raspberry pi using the Allwinner A10 cpu which is a cortex a8 (armv7) single core at 1ghz using a mali 400 gpu. The mass volume price is 7 USD for an order of 5,000 cpus.I think this will be a great replacement for the arm v6 they are using now.

Certainly someone can, but RPI is getting a sweetheart deal on the Broadcom chip as it is so I doubt the RPI Foundation will be the one to do it. Certainly, there's an interest in these sorts of devices. Question is if anyone other than non-profits would bother to do it.

Broadcom is a/the major sponsor and the soc supplier. They are not going to drop Broadcom.A cortex A8 with mali is going to be a step forward in cpu power and a step back in gpu power.

A board redesign for a new/different soc isn't trivial or cheap and for a board like this is basically starting from scratch.

I think we'd all like a raspberry pi now , not in another 3 - 9 months after a redesign.

Similar boards have been around for years(10+) but not at such a low price.The cheapest similar boards are in the US$80 to 200 range(more in the $140 to 300 range)cortex A8 at 700MHz or 1GHz (Omap3503/3530 or DM3730 or AM37xx) or A9 at 1.2GHz(omap 4430/omap4460).

Gumstix has produced similar boards for years, originally used the Intel xscale arm chips(brought from DEC)

If you want something with an cortex A8 , try a beagle bone or a beagle boardxm or gumstix overoOr cortex A9 try a pandaboard ES

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a matter of the parts list just having the last digit wrong because it was copied from the part above/below it on digikey when it was added to the BOM. I know that things like that have happened at my old job and you don't find out until the first batch comes back and it turns on, but you can't talk to the board.

This mighty fine board needs a distro that can eke out the last drop of performance!

There's an Arch Linux for ARM distro on their website, which is probably the closest thing to Gentoo. I'll be using it since all my computers already use Arch, and I love its clean, simple set up. It's also a lot easier to manage than Gentoo - I sure don't want to run big compilation tasks on a 600Mhz ARM11 CPU.

I can't help but think about the problems faced by the Open Pandora group (who are attempting to build an open source handheld video game console) when hearing Raspberry Pi was rushing into production as quickly as they were.

I respect the heck out of the Open Pandora guys, but I think even they would say production of something like this was way more complex and fraught with dangers than expected. I think they are 2 years in and have produced 500 units. Very similar problems on the first run, and then a whole litany of problems when the first batches actually hit consumers hands.

I'd suggest everyone dial back their expectations to avoid a lot of whining in the future..

I would buy but the GPU is closed source (actually the GPU binary driver boots the OS, making it untouchable) thereby making it pointless as an open source learning platform.

Ha! I just looked into this and yeah - looks like the chip was originally designed as a stand-alone GPU which has a helper ARM11 bolted on. As opposed to a general-purpose CPU with a GPU attached to offload graphics processing.

Guess that explains the funny boot order (Binary blob configs the GPU, which in turn bootstraps the ARM) and the relative mismatch in performance between the GPU and CPU - it seems not to have been designed to host an Application OS.

[Probably similar to the original PSP which was MIPS based, but there was an ancillary ARM hanging off the wifi chipset, doing black-box wifi things.]

I guess that enabled them to buy the GPU chip, and get a 'free' CPU with broadcom's support to pull in linux kernel externally.

I would buy but the GPU is closed source (actually the GPU binary driver boots the OS, making it untouchable) thereby making it pointless as an open source learning platform.

Although the project is benefiting greatly from the open source OS and software, the point of the project is to offer an EXTREMELY CHEAP way for schools to get computers into the hands of young kids, and get them interested in programming.

"I wish it had processor X." "I wanted Y interface." "I won't use it because the company that spent millions of dollars in development of a low power, highly efficient GPU, won't give me free access to the code, so I can access the bits that they are blocking us from, due to the license fees they would be responsible for paying!"

If the features you want/need are not available in the Raspberry Pi, you will have to find another device. If you want to help a kid learn how to code, buy a few, hand them out, and work with them.

The Broadcom VideoCore is a very solid stream processor with a conspicuously weak logic co-processor. I suspect that Raspberry Pi is Broadcom's way of trying to market VideoCore to serious SoC vendors as a competitor to the dominant PowerVR.

Both VideoCore and PowerVR use variants of the tile-based deferred rendering pipeline, but VideoCore has a more flexible instruction set designed for implementing powerful video processing routines at the pixel shading stage of the rendering pipeline. The design is very attractive, but it's missing a complete SoC implementation that can compete with the PowerVR-based solutions, and the benefits of its unique programming features won't be fully realized until third-party developers get their hands on the hardware.

Well, he does have a point. Initializing the system requires a binary blob that only works with Linux. Furthermore the whole architecture is very tightly locked. You get no more freedom with the hardware than what you got with the "Other OS" option of the PS3, since in both cases you have a hypervisor limiting access to the hardware.

At this time (bar any future reverse-engineering of the binary blob) porting any other kind of OS other than Linux on it looks infeasible. As a learning tool that seems kind of weak to me.

SOFTWAREWhat operating system (OS) does it use?We’ll be using Fedora as our recommended distribution. It’s straightforward to replace the root partition on the SD card with another ARM Linux distro if you want to use something else. The OS is stored on the SD card.

Does it have an official programming language?By default, we’ll be supporting Python as the educational language.Any language which will compile for ARMv6 can be used with the Raspberry Pi, though; so you’re not limited to using Python.

Will it run WINE (or Windows, or other x86 software)?No.

What Linux distros will be supported at launch?Fedora, Debian and ArchLinux will be supported from the start. We hope to see support from other distros later. (Because of issues with newer releases of Ubuntu and the ARM processor we are using, Ubuntu can’t commit to support Raspberry Pi at the moment.) You will be able to download distro images from us as soon as the Raspberry Pi is released, and we will also be selling pre-loaded SD cards shortly after release.

Will it run Android?If someone in the community can port a version of Android to work with 256MB of RAM, then it’ll run on the Raspberry Pi.

So it sounds like community porting is not only possible but part of their aims. There was also talk from a third party about porting RISC OS.

I don't see any mention of BDS-likes or other OSes there. Only OSes that use the Linux kernel because the blob is currently needed to do something basic like initialize the CPU.

I'd love to be proven wrong but unless Broadcom provides complete specifications for interfacing with the SOC then it's a choice of either using the blob with supported kernels (currently only Linux) or settle for a reduced reverse-engineered feature-set by any future OSS driver (kinda like nouveau).

Well, he does have a point. Initializing the system requires a binary blob that only works with Linux. Furthermore the whole architecture is very tightly locked. You get no more freedom with the hardware than what you got with the "Other OS" option of the PS3, since in both cases you have a hypervisor limiting access to the hardware.

At this time (bar any future reverse-engineering of the binary blob) porting any other kind of OS other than Linux on it looks infeasible. As a learning tool that seems kind of weak to me.

huh ? If a binary blob works for linux it should work for android but it is armv6 not armv7.

weak ? no.Its not designed/aimed at running a full desktop but at leaning to program (python , c) and learning to interface. To get a 700MHz chip and board at the same price as an arduino board is pretty impressive going!

Its not aimed at us but at kids/non programmers/non-IT types. I suggest you look at one of the beagle boards, pandaboards or gumstix or trim pc or trim slice or similar.They all have multiple linux distros, and android versions available.

I bought one, the delay until the first week of June didn't deter me. I'm just a hobbyist and don't have any real purpose for this machine, other than to tinker around. Bottom line is that the appeal of the RPi for me, is the cost. I paid $48 including tax and shipping for a SoC system with a 700mhz cpu, 256 MB of RAM and 10/100Mbit LAN

I got hot on the idea of a Gumstix-based car pc years ago. The more I looked into it, though, it would have cost damn near $200 to have anything usable (not counting the touchscreen, amps, etc.) At that point, it's just silly. I could have built a full-blown Mini-ITX system running Windows (hate all you want - I'm a Windows guy) for not much more.

$35, though, for something that's nearly usable out of the box (still need to look into touchscreens), now we're talking. Still not particularly looking forward to wrestling with Linux (maybe it's just me, but my past experiences with Linux have been far from enjoyable.) That kind of money, if it doesn't work out, I'll use it for something else.

For all the people bitching about it: shut up. This is an amazing project, and you should be damn glad you will be able to get your hands on one. If it isn't what you want, stop bitching and find something that does fit what you want. Better yet, if you're in the US, do better. Start a Kickstarter project, get your funding, and do it better. Cram an ARMv11 together with a ZOMG SO FAST GPU, HDMI, network, the whole thing, for less than $50. Otherwise, go with one of the many, many options out there that do fit what you want, for ~$150.

huh ? If a binary blob works for linux it should work for android but it is armv6 not armv7.

weak ? no.Its not designed/aimed at running a full desktop but at leaning to program (python , c) and learning to interface. To get a 700MHz chip and board at the same price as an arduino board is pretty impressive going!

Its not aimed at us but at kids/non programmers/non-IT types. I suggest you look at one of the beagle boards, pandaboards or gumstix or trim pc or trim slice or similar.They all have multiple linux distros, and android versions available.

Why would you need a R-Pi to learn high-level languages that you can also use a more powerful $50 PC from 2004 to ``learn"? And as far as hardware connectivity does (for controlling analog or digital electronics) the Arduino blows it out of the water. And who cares about Linux, when it comes to learning BSD-likes us where it's at.

I wished the Pi was another Arduino where you had absolute control over the hardware for hacking purposes. Instead it's a very closed system (more closed than the average PC) with less flexibility and openness than the average PC. That's no tool but rather a toy.

Its a soc not a micro, using socs is a lot different than micros.Some manufacturers are more open with docs than others.Broadcom is one of the worst for not freely releasing data sheets (Marvel is a close second)Ti is much better with its omap line. But almost none of them give you decent docs for the gpu.

Its the same for socs in phones , tablets, industrial devices

Won't be able to get netbsd (or other on this) easily as its armv6

Arduino is good tool for beginners but it wastes a lot of the processing power on an avr.